


I was made that way

by El Staplador (elstaplador)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Angst, Brief digressions on the nature of Love, Communication, F/M, M/M, Multi, The Great Idfic Virus of Winter 2016/17, Trust, Unrequited Love, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-09
Updated: 2017-02-09
Packaged: 2018-09-23 04:32:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9640889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elstaplador/pseuds/El%20Staplador
Summary: Five times Victor Nikiforov fell in love and one time it wasn't a big deal.(Or, Victor falls hard, and he falls often. Always has, always will.)





	

**1.**  
Alexei was fifteen. Victor was thirteen. And jealous.

Alexei was winning junior championships, and, what was worse, Victor knew he deserved it.

'I can't bear it,' he said. 'I'll never be that good. What's the point? Why do I even skate? Why don't I, oh, I don't know, become a circus clown or something?'

'You're quite ridiculous enough already, Vitya,' Yakov told him. 'And being a clown takes work, too.'

Alexei was beautiful to watch; he swooped and dipped across the ice like a seagull, and his jumps were impeccable. Victor couldn't take his eyes off him.

'It can't just be work,' he said.

'It is.'

'Then I want to be able to work like that.'

Yakov nodded grudgingly. 'You could do a lot worse than to follow his example.'

Victor started working.

  
At nationals that year he got his reward. He didn't beat Alexei – as things turned out, he would never beat Alexei – but Alexei stopped being a god and started being a human, and kissed him. In that moment, it was all Victor wanted.

  
**2.**  
Alexei stopped skating, and Victor's heart broke.

Or, perhaps:

Victor broke Alexei's heart, and Alexei stopped skating.

  
Victor hadn't meant to break anyone's heart. He never did.

He hadn't meant to fall in love. He never did. And this time he wished he hadn't.

He didn't _do_ anything. He spent too much time Googling; he spent too much time on YouTube; he looked up too many stats. He wanted to know everything and he ended up with nothing.

Alexei made no speeches. He made no scenes. He just faded out of skating and out of Victor's life, while Victor tried desperately to work out what was wrong with him, or, since the answer to that was _everything_ , what was so compelling about:

Long chestnut hair, held back from the face with a white band. A lovely posture. A triple toe loop that wasn't even very good.

'There's presence there,' Yakov said, 'but the technique is abysmal.'

  
_Presence_ , Victor thought.

He started growing his hair. It made nothing better, except perhaps his scores.

  
**3.**  
'Don't even think about it,' Yakov said.

Victor didn't take his gaze off the ice. 'I'm not thinking about it.'

'I mean it, Vitya. You're competing against her brother tomorrow. You must have heard what he's like. You can't afford to complicate things.'

'I won't complicate things.'

The thing about Sara Crispino, Victor thought, was that she was not complicated at all. Or, rather, she kept her complications separate. Whatever it was that was going on in her life, she left it behind at the edge of the ice.

The moment she even considered getting involved with him, that would be gone.

Perhaps, Victor thought, he would do better to pick a fight with her brother, get everything out in the open. Get it over with. Move on.

But he didn't. He just watched her.

  
He probed the emotion like an aching tooth, couldn't stop himself looking at Sara's social media feeds, or, when she hadn't updated recently, her brother's. It hurt, but it was better than not hurting.

  
Yakov, who preferred to keep out of the way of skaters' feelings if he could possibly manage it, sent him to see Mikhail Petrov, who had a bushy black beard and strong opinions about love.

'Every human being is worthy of love. Every last one of them. Therefore, your feelings are perfectly reasonable.'

'Really?' Victor protested.

Mikhail thumped the edge of the desk. 'And, whoever you fall in love with, it says much more about you than it does about them.'

'It does?' Victor said.

'Think of it as a problem. Look for clues. What you see in this person is something that, deep down, you feel that you yourself are missing. And once you know that it doesn't matter whether or not the person loves you back, because you can find some other way to get it.'

Victor thought this irrelevant at best, because, whatever it was that Sara Crispino had, he wasn't going to go chasing her for it, but it stuck in his head.

  
After a while, the feelings evaporated, and there was only the skating.

  


**4.**  
At first, Victor didn't realise. At first, he thought of the dancing at the banquet as a pleasantly amusing interlude in an otherwise predictably dull evening.

He thought of the story of the man who was robbed and didn't realise until days later, when he thought to look in the safe. He thought of the story of the man who was stabbed in the heart and didn't realise until hours later, when he died.

For six whole months he congratulated himself on dealing with it so well.

No one suspected a thing.

  
And then the video went up, and Victor was surprised how fast his heart was beating, because he was a dead man, wasn't he?

He remembered Mikhail's words. What's Yuuri got that I haven't? Victor wondered.

The answer was obvious: _he knows what he wants_.

  
Victor had to revise this estimate somewhat when he got to Hasetsu; but he found that getting Yuuri to admit to wanting what he wanted was half the fun.

  
**5.**  
_A sense of fun.  
_

_A pioneering spirit._

_An endearing openness about a taste in appallingly cheesy movies._

Victor was listing the reasons before he realised that he had a reason to be working out the reasons.

'No,' he said, out loud, to himself or the universe or whoever was in charge. 'No, please, no.'

It made no difference whatsoever. Nor did telling himself that he was a terrible, terrible person; selfish; greedy; _ungrateful_ ; honestly, what more did he want?

Eventually, it got to the point where pretending that nothing was wrong was causing more problems than admitting to the truth. Because it was obvious that Yuuri was beginning to think that, whatever it was, it was _his_ fault, not Victor's. And as they lay together in the darkness, with only their fingertips touching, the room was heavy with things unsaid.

'What's wrong?' Yuuri asked, his voice little more than a whisper.

It was probably the seventeenth time that he had asked that question, and this time Victor admitted it.

'I have a horrendous crush on... somebody. I wish I didn't, and I love you.'

'Oh,' Yuuri said. 'Oh.'

He was silent for so long that the temptation to fill the space was overwhelming.

'I am terrified,' Victor said, 'that I will lose my mind and run off and leave you and make an idiot of myself and everyone will know and everyone will hate me and _you'll_ hate me.'

'That doesn't really sound like something you'd do,' Yuuri said.

'No? Once I went half way around the world to throw myself at a man because I saw a video of him skating.'

'You didn't abandon anyone for him.' Then, suddenly worried, 'Did you?'

'No,' Victor said. 'It's happened before. I fall in love with people all the time, and it's usually ridiculous, and it's always _awful_. Yakov sent me to a psychiatrist!'

'Did it help?'

'No,' Victor said. He thought about it a bit. 'Maybe. I just... I thought now I had you, things would be different. Because I'm happy. But here we are.'

'Here we are,' Yuuri echoed. There was an incongruous note of hope in his tone.

'Did I ever tell you about Alexei?' He knew he never had.

'Tell me about Alexei,' Yuuri said, clearly humouring him.

Victor sighed expansively. 'First boyfriend. Very good skater. I fell in love with somebody else. He stopped skating.'

'When you fell in love with the other person,' Yuuri asked, carefully, 'did you stop being in love with Alexei?'

'I fucked everything up.'

'That wasn't what I asked.' Yuuri's voice was reproachful.

'No, then. Not for a long time after. I broke his heart and my own and I think he just got fed up with it. And now it's happening again and _I don't want it to_.'

'My poor love,' Yuuri murmured. Unexpectedly, he rolled over and kissed Victor, hard.

'You're too good to me,' Victor said, when he was able to. 'You always surprise me.'

Yuuri chuckled. 'You're irresistible; you suffer so beautifully.'

Victor was needled. 'Why do I get the feeling that you're not taking this seriously?'

'I think you're taking it seriously enough for both of us,' Yuuri said. Then, inquisitively, 'Did you ever... you know... Chris?'

'Yes. No. I mean, yes, we did, but no, I wasn't.'

He felt rather than saw Yuuri's nod. 'Does he know...?'

'About this? Yes.' For some reason, having told Chris first almost felt like more of a betrayal. Victor groaned theatrically. 'He said, had I considered polyamory?'

'And have you?' Yuuri asked, with interest.

Victor groaned. 'I thought about the diary management and gave up.'

Yuuri was definitely laughing now.

'It's not _funny_ ,' Victor said, aggrieved.

'Yes, it is.'

'You're taking this far better than I expected.' Far better, Victor thought guiltily, than _he_ would, if their roles were reversed.

'Well, you can't help your feelings, can you? It's what you do about it that counts. And you're a far more decent person than you think you are.' Yuuri wriggled his shoulders in what might have been a shrug. 'You're getting better at it. You notice the habit, it changes the habit. You change the habit, the habit's different next time... what? You're not the only one whose coach sent him to a shrink. Though in my case Celestino was trying to get me to stop biting my nails.'

It wasn't a particularly flattering comparison, Victor thought. 'I don't deserve you.'

Yuuri propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at Victor. 'Do you love me?' And there was a softness in his eyes that told Victor that he was not, after all, entirely sure of the answer.

'Always. I don't know what the fuck's wrong with me, but I know that.'

'Show me, then.'

  
Some time later, Yuuri asked, 'Who is it, anyway?'

'Phichit,' Victor admitted, and wondered whether Yuuri could see him blush.

There was a moment of surprised silence before Yuuri said, 'Well, that's fine, then. If you tried anything he'd kill you.'

'I only ever fall for good people,' Victor murmured.

'You have excellent taste.' Laughter bubbled delightfully through Yuuri. 'And I _said_ it was funny.'

  
**\+ 1.**  
Yuuri knew the signs by now. A half-drunk giddiness alternating with a hangdog expression of guilt. Extravagant romantic gestures coupled with protestations that Victor was totally unworthy of any expression of gratitude.

He could have waited for Victor to tell him, but really, it saved a lot of time and trouble just to ask.

'Victor. Who is it this time?'

And, because it didn't really matter who it was, he kissed him without waiting for the answer.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'Falling in love again'.


End file.
